Winners and Losers: Week of the Wildstein Bombshell

In a word: secure. He remains the only governor to have slipped the surly bonds of New Jersey to land in the White House. Remember, to those who intend to run for president in the future out of “the Garden State:” go before the first term ends. Christie’s showing – in alarming moment to moment detail – just how tough it is to escape the swamp.

Cory Booker

Maybe he doesn’t want to run for president anymore after witnessing what is happening to Christie. But he’s the only one out there right now with the name ID and ambition to make the run that Christie once craved.

Hillary Clinton

A new Quinnipiac University poll released this week showed Christie losing traction in the 2016 presidential race when matched against the former U.S. Secretary of State. Christie now trails Clinton 51-35 percent.

Ras Baraka

Establishment efforts to nudge North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos out of the Newark Mayor’s race proved fruitless, making it more difficult for either Ramos or former state Assistant Attorney General Shavar Jeffries of the South Ward to get traction.

Wilda Diaz

The mayor of Perth Amboy takes over this week as head of the New Jersey Urban Mayors’ Association.

Christina Zuk

State Sen. Barbara Buono’s former chief of staff got a job this week as director of legislative and political affairs at JNESO, a professional health union.

LOSERS

Chris Christie

It was another bad week for the governor, as he absorbed headline after dreadful headline, the worst this time arguably topping a Star-Ledger story that illustrated how his administration used a Hurricane Sandy slush fund to reward a Christie-friendly mayor who had few Sandy-related challenges relative to the rest of the state.

David Samson

The New York Times reported that the Rockefeller Group dismissed Wolff Samson – the firm of the embattled Port Authority Commission chairman – from representing their controversial Hoboken development project.

Tony Mack

Let’s face it: it doesn’t look good. Never did, in point of very cold fact. The embattled mayor’s defense team rested their case Thursday morning after a single witness took the stand in defense of the mayor and his brother Ralphiel Mack, according to the Times of Trenton. The jury was dismissed until Monday when both sides will present closing arguments.

Louis M.J. DiLeo

The state Supreme Court this week upheld disciplinary findings against a former Linden municipal judge. The state’s high court ruled 6-0 that “former Judge [DiLeo] committed egregious legal errors in conducting the proceedings involving Anthony Kirkland and Wendell Kirkland.” The two were facing charges in a theft and burglary case. The court said that DiLeo’s conduct violated canons of judicial conduct and warranted a public reprimand.

Felix Roque

The West New York mayor could not put away a slate of Board of Education candidates backed by Roque’s old Facebook/courtroom nemesis, Hudson County Freeholder Director Jose Munoz.

New Jersey

If you game this one out, it doesn’t get better. It just gets worse and worse. We could get into the details, but they’ll be disgorged soon enough.